This thesis investigates several selected environmental issues in China from an economic perspective. It consists of four self-contained papers. Chapters 2-4 address the issues related to water shortage, while Chapter 5 focuses on the cost of air pollution. Chapter 2 analyses the potential...

"This paper presents and discusses an integrated set of policies designed to reduce U.S. carbon emissions over the next four decades. This innovation path also aims to promote environmental quality, particularly by reducing emissions of criteria air pollutants, to reduce U.S. dependence on...

Cap-and-trade programs for air emissions have become the widely accepted, preferred approach to cost-effective pollution reduction. One of the important design questions in a trading program is how to initially distribute the emissions allowances. Under the Acid Rain program created by Title IV...

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is an effort by nine Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states to develop a regional, mandatory, market-based cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electricity sector. The initiative is expected to lead to an increase in the...

PART I: INTRODUCTIONChapter 1: introduction and method1.1 General introduction 1.2 Purpose, aim and scope1.3 Outline and methodPART II: SEA-LEVEL RISE AND DECISION-MAKING IN THE COASTAL ZONEChapter 2: the garbage can – a theoretical approach to decision-making2.1 Decision-making processes in...

The effectiveness of SO{sub 2} emission allowance trading under Title 4 of the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act (CAA) is of great interest due to the innovative nature of this market incentive approach. However, it may be a mistake to frame the compliance problem for a utility as a decision...

This paper deals with the market for SO{sub 2} emission allowances over time and electric utility compliance choices. For currently high emitting plants ( 2.5 lb SO{sub 2}/MMBtu), the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) provide for about twice as many SO{sub 2} allowances to be issued per year...

This report provides background information for the Bonneville Power Administration (Bonneville) in its efforts to quantify the environmental externalities associated with new electricity resources. A more detailed companion document has been provided to Bonneville for internal use. This report...

Concentrations of environmental pollutants tend to follow positively skewed frequency distributions. Two such density functions are the gamma and lognormal. Minimum variance unbiased estimators of the expected value for both densities are available. The small sample statistical properties of...